Wearables for Digital Workplace.
Today decrease in the size of the electronic components, chips, sensors, and better battery life has improved the way for the wearable to be more adopted.
As predicted earlier that the wearable will be inconspicuous to the eyes and gestures to manage. Wearable devices are not new and its more than a smartwatch and smart glass, in-fact the wearable technologies were there, days back with military personal been using it, the night vision glasses, which is been loaded with infrared cameras for the night vision to scale along the rough and dark terrain.
In the consumer wearable market
, fitness monitoring devices like Jawbone and Fitbit are accelerating the adoption of the simplistic form factors. As the electronic components are getting smaller and economic in cost, the communication and the connectivity is getting improved. The wearables will be poised to penetrate the digital workplace.
How the workplace can wear the wearable for digital disruption.
Digital Workplace can embrace the new generation wearables to cater to most of the industrial environment to achieve employee experience and productivity. The wearable in the enterprise is adopted with two major driving factors:
The employee in the field needs more real-time data than the person working at a desk in an office and the next one is the Workplace Application integrated with wearables provides better ROI than those wearable used in consumer segments.
For example how a smart glasses and augmented reality (AR) can help a courier company to improve the efficiency in hands-free operations and reduces human errors.
There will be a significant improvement in productivity and efficiency, with real-time data fed precisely into the employee wearables. The Smart Glass as wearable integrated with augmented reality is the best bet for the industry, where the engineers or technocrats to access information from the cloud or from mobile devices to perform hands-free operations in the field. AR integrated with data interchange protocols and machine monitoring system can provide detailed management information is available in real-time. Even though we have the wearable advantage, still there are few challenges. However, we need to blueprint to fit the wearables for the digital workplace.
Wearables Challenges – Privacy and Usability
Does wearable are safe, while a user walks around within the smart glasses with something in the line of sight in a hazardous environment? If a technocrat is working in a condition where has to wear safety gloves, then the wearable with capacitive touch with Smartwatch will not serve the purpose, it is similar to the situation where the user works in a noisy environment, where the voice command will not be effective.
On Privacy, the enterprise doesn’t want the employee to continuously view and record all the work environment with AR-based wearables without security controls in place. Employees also don’t like to watch by their supervisor for the entire day. So leveraging wearables for enterprises need more detailed study for the specific work environment, with the right design and have widespread adoption.
To make the wearables to be more functional in the workplace, they must be simplified than complicate the operation, need to be non-intrusive, and should be a performance for excellence to focus on the primary job tasks. Wearables need to be a device and technology to help technocrats to the next level in roles and should not be awkward or unfamiliar equipment.
Right, Use of Wearable in Enterprise.
Wearables in the enterprise need to be simple to use and more practical use than consumer-grade devices. Technocrats should be able to use it without getting distracted from the role they play in a job.
Smart Glasses and Watch.
The Smart Glasses and Watch have to provide the features like.
1. Doing checklist based activities
2. Collaboration with SME in AV mode
3. Discrete task automation like bar-code scanning.
4. Automating Workflow like defective part identification and updating
5. Provide real-time updates and notifications with haptic feedback in a noisy environment.
We can make endless practical applications with glasses and watches. Another instance with “Smart Gloves” which turn colors, in sensing the gas and liquid, which alert engineer on the toxic levels. These are few examples of wearables in responsiveness, improved productivity, and security in the workplace. There is a huge benefit in increasing the workforce productivity using wearables. Most of the enterprises yet to realize the possibilities and potential of the wearables technologies to automate the business process to unleash the wide range of workplace use cases.
As stated, Courier Company can bring operational efficiency with smart glasses with AR. Retail giants can automatically track the transported goods along the shelves, workers need to provide time estimates for completion, Wrist band in the worker can check the right order of fulfillment. Wearables can save billions of dollars by bringing operational efficiencies in specific industries and types of workforce with safer and secure workplaces.
The Wearables Value.
The wearables that bring great values in the business process in the workplace were:
1. Safety First. Provide a heads-up display and pull the mobile device out of the kit, were job in high tension cable environment for hands-free operations.
2. Operation Efficiency. Get rid of bar code scanning on the package to navigate to access the routing information for forklift operations
3. Access to Information. Enterprise application for wearable includes doing the high precision process, physically/psychosocially tiring jobs, Real-time data collection of machines and transmission, tracking systems, and remote control of autonomous equipment.
4. Employee Efficiency. Provide real-time data on wearable, help in hands-free, instead of holding tools and equipment
5. Seamless Collaboration. Connecting field worker with experts on another side, who can visualize exactly what field worker is seeing.
6. Decision Making. Compress the time to intent to action literally in seconds.
Wearable Key Consideration.
The goal of the wearables is to make the users empowered to make real-time decisions and actions by providing relevant and contextual information precisely at the point of decision making. Enterprise needs to build strategies on wearable around it. Wearable best bet in situations where traditional technologies like smarts phones or portable computers are not a perfect fit.
What is it designed for?
Wearable for enterprise is designed to meet a specific need and augmented for an apparatus to achieve specific goals.
Immersive Displays – Ideal for business process improvements Virtual Reality Devices – Good fit for worker training and stimulations
Augmented + VR – Microsoft HoloLens kind of device adds a new dimension to VR
Smart Watch - Haptic feedback for non-intrusive and safety notification.
Other Body devices – Like Necklace, Gloves, Belt, Shoe, Clothing and Jewelry, or even digital EM INK (Digital Tattoo)
Conclusion.
Enterprises that are ready to shed traditional thinking and work through misconceptions, as well as rethink and redesign their business processes to support workers with digital and just-in-time contextual information, can increase worker efficiency and productivity while making the workplace safer and more secure. These businesses will not only establish themselves as modern organizations that attract the best and brightest workers but will also get a jumpstart on fulfilling the immense potential of wearables.
